Chris Felsenthal leapt out of the golf cart, ran to hit the ball on the third hole and sprinted back before the water sprinkler made its way around on the course.

Alice Benga, another regular in the nine-hole league, watched her, a bit in awe. Felsenthal is 98.

Benga, more than 30 years her junior, was recalling that game, which they had played shortly before the pandemic began.

“She played very well that day, and I played very poorly, but the result is the result,” says Benga, 66.

Felsenthal beat her. She laughed while Benga recounted the story. She’s an avid, no-nonsense golfer, committed to the game for more than 60 years. Her age hasn’t dimmed her competitive streak.

“I think it’s time society got a fresh new look of what they think of senior citizens,” Felsenthal says. “We’re not decrepit.”

Felsenthal lives in Kirkwood, Missouri, and drives herself to the Paradise Valley Golf Course to play with the league she’s been part of for more than 30 years. She’s one of a growing number of seniors who are devoted to staying as active as possible into their 90s -- and beyond.

Grace Warden, now 101, had been taking exercise classes for a few years before a recent injury sidelined her. She attended the 45-minute classes twice a week with her daughter, Nita Herold.

Herold says they found the class through a catalog from the nonprofit Oasis Institute. For decades, the organization has offered a variety of exercise and educational programs for seniors.

Juliet Simone, chief program officer for Oasis, says the classes range from gentle chair yoga to more vigorous step, strength and stretching workouts. She credits the advancements in public health, medicine and awareness, along with increased programming and funding, for keeping older people active longer.

“We’ve finally flipped the script on what was an ageist adage, ‘Give your old bones a rest,’” Simone says. The new script is to move more: Being active and engaged will help you stay healthier and feeling better for longer.

She’s also noticed a general attitude shift. People are more willing to try new things, regardless of their age. That type of attitude and resilient spirit are recurrent themes among those who continue to keep moving.

Herold says Warden has survived a number of hardships in her long life, including her husband’s and son’s cancers.

“She has a wonderful attitude and great sense of humor and is still as sharp as can be,” Herold says. Her centenarian mom still balances her own checkbook.

Seniors enrolled in eligible Medicare programs can participate at no cost in one of 15,000 SilverSneakers programs across the country. Cheryl Seabright, who was named the program’s instructor of the year, says the classes offer more than a physical benefit. The mental and social components are just as vital to improving a person’s well-being.

One of Seabright's regular participants, Ruth Ann Brenly, 97, takes hourlong SilverSneakers classes three days a week, along with taking a 2-mile walk outside every day. She started after her husband died 17 years ago.

“It was something for me to do and get out of the house,” she says. “I think if you sat around a lot, you would be moping.”

She admits that it isn’t always easy to get started. She has a pacemaker and takes seven different pills in the morning, mostly for a heart ailment. Her ability to focus on the positive rather than on her pains and troubles seems to be a key to keeping her going.

Charlotte Jaycox, 90, also joined a program after losing her husband, and now takes ExerStart classes twice a week. She has met several other women who were widowed.

“I like the exercise, but I really like all the friendships, which I need because I’m alone,” she says. “We talk a lot, and we exercise and we laugh; that’s important.”

In the U.S., women live about six years longer than men, according to 2021 CDC data. That’s reflected in the participants in these exercise programs, where women far outnumber men.

Felsenthal, the golfer, can attest to the power of consistency. April through October, she finds her way to the course. She leaves any aches at home on those days and doesn’t dwell on any troubles. Many of the younger senior players in her league tell her she inspires them.

“I want to be out and playing when I’m 98 years old, have a good attitude about it and play a decent game,” Benga says. She admires her friend’s outgoing and happy demeanor.

And she respects her game.

She’s asked Felsenthal for a rematch.

Shawn Caradine Sr. put on an orange work jacket to protect his dress clothes. He brought his tools to a rental property he owns in the city to fix the air conditioning unit for the new tenants.

Caradine, 61, a mechanical engineer with a master's in business, also earned a technical certification in HVAC years ago. The skills have come in handy since he started buying and rehabbing houses in his old St. Louis neighborhood in the 1980s.

Caradine, a Black man who grew up a few blocks from this rental house, is respected and well known in the community. He owns seven properties in the West End, and has helped rehab about 50 others, in an effort to help stabilize the area.

On this day in early September, Caradine's tenant had tripped the house's SimpliSafe alarm a few times while moving stuff in and out. A series of messages on Caradine’s phone alerted him to the situation, which he responded to.

Around 4 p.m., when Caradine was about to start working on the outdoor AC unit, the alarm got tripped again. He saw a St. Louis police officer jump a fence and race over toward him. The officer asked to see his identification.

Caradine’s driver's license shows his home address in the suburbs, which he thought might confuse the situation. He offered to give the officer his phone, showing the call log with the security alerts, and to hand over the keys to the house. When the officer kept asking for ID, Caradine asked him to call a sergeant.

“Oh, you’re one of those kinds,” he recalled the officer saying. Caradine says the officer put one handcuff on him, then grabbed his shoulder and stuck his leg out to trip him. Caradine fell to the ground and the officer put his body on Caradine’s back. Caradine said the officer began to choke him with his right arm. When he got Caradine’s left arm, he handcuffed him.

“I’m going to be killed by a police officer at my own house,” Caradine remembered thinking. His shock was even greater than the throbbing pain in his head.

He had never been in handcuffs before. He and his wife raised their two sons, one a mechanical engineer and the other a manufacturing engineer, to always be respectful to the police. Son Michael Caradine, 24, who lives in Los Angeles, said his father had repeatedly taught him and his brother what to do in any police encounter: Don’t talk back. Don’t raise your voice. Don’t be aggressive in any way. Say yes ma’am, yes sir. Be as respectful as possible. Do what they say.

Caradine said he sat in handcuffs outside his house for half an hour, humiliated, even as neighbors vouched for him as the owner of the property.

When he told me about the incident, he shared his career accomplishments and how much they meant for his family: He was the first to graduate from college. The first to become an engineer. The first to get a master's degree. The first Black entrepreneur to own a Chik-fil-A franchise in the city. He had served as a deacon in his church and as a Boy Scout Leader, and his son became an Eagle Scout.

He rehabbed Section 8 housing so struggling families could find decent places to stay. In the process, he hired dozens of local young people to try to give them a way out of impoverished neighborhoods.

“I love St. Louis,” he said. “St. Louis is my home.”

But all his degrees and success and community standing didn’t change how he was treated in that encounter. Eventually, a sergeant came, talked to him and told an officer to release him.

On the drive home, Caradine called a few police officers he knew personally. They urged him to file a complaint at the district office. He wrote a detailed timeline and description of the experience and filed a case with internal affairs.

A spokesman for the police department said they do not comment on pending internal investigations. Caradine has a meeting scheduled with an internal affairs investigator.

He wants to see the officer reprimanded or removed from the department. He wants to talk to him face-to-face. Refusing to show an ID, while offering other ways to identify yourself, should not warrant being screamed at, thrown to the ground, choked and handcuffed, he said.

While his physical injuries are healing, one painful realization has stayed with him.

“He didn’t know all the things I have accomplished,” Caradine said. “He didn’t see all that. He saw a Black man in an orange jacket.”

Shelly Snow Pordea grew up in a fundamentalist religious sect.

When she was a child, her parents moved from her birthplace of St. Louis to Hammond, Indiana, to be near the First Baptist Church, an Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) megachurch then run by Jack Hyles.

Pordea, now 48, remembers her early life tightly revolving around this church.

The outside world, she was taught, was a threatening and scary place. Her parents subscribed to Hyles’ child-rearing methods, which promoted hitting children into submission -- spanking babies as young as 6 months old. Pordea said her parents later told her that they kept rubber bands on her wrists when she was 2 years old, which they would snap against her skin to keep her in line. It wasn’t until Pordea was 14 and listening to a talk about promiscuous women during an IFB youth camp that she realized she had been sexually abused as a 4-year-old by a church member.

After the lecture, she confided the abuse to a camp counselor.

“I was told I was tainted and not clean anymore,” Pordea said. And she had been conditioned to believe it.

As a teenager, she tried to keep the peace in her family, especially after her brother ran away from home at 17. She attended the unaccredited Hyles-Anderson College, where she took classes that taught her it was a woman’s fault if a man strayed from his marriage.

Pordea got some physical distance from the church when she got married and moved overseas with her husband, although she was still deeply invested in it emotionally and mentally. Through the internet, Pordea discovered the accusations against Hyles of sexual scandals and financial misappropriation. She began connecting with former IFB members on social media, who shared their own stories of abuse.

Over time, the indoctrination began to unravel. By age 30, Pordea began to believe she had been raised in a cult. In 2013, the church leader Jack Schaap, Hyles’ son-in-law, was convicted of taking a 16-year-old across state lines to have sex with her. He was sent to federal prison.

“That was a point of no return,” Pordea said.

Pordea, who now lives in St. Peters, Missouri, joined forces with others in the cult survivor world to host a first-ever, live storytelling event last month in St. Louis. She wants to raise awareness of how some organizations use coercion, manipulation and undue influence in order to abuse and control people.

The movement began during the pandemic with the #IGotOut hashtag on social media, with people sharing their own experiences in cultic groups. A number of documentaries, podcasts and TV shows have brought awareness to the diverse range of such organizations. Some are political, religious or spiritual, while others revolve around doomsday prophesies, sex, self-help and even multilevel marketing.

Gerette Buglion, an author and executive director of IGotOut.org, was a teacher for 19 years before she became involved with a self-help group that eventually took over her life. She was introduced to the group leader by fellow teachers who were getting dream therapy sessions from him. Buglion began sessions as well, and the leader used the personal information she shared during therapy to slowly manipulate her and create dependence on him.

For 18 years, Buglion remained under the mind control of a charismatic fraud.

Almost 10 years ago, another woman in the organization described how the leader would yell at her for hours at a time for her perceived infractions. Because this information came from a person within the cult whom Buglion trusted and cared about, it created a big crack in her perception of the leader.

That was the opening she needed to get out.

Buglion, who has now heard hundreds of stories from survivors and their loved ones, said it is critical to try to maintain some kind of connection with a person you fear is being indoctrinated. She has since published the book “An Everyday Cult.” In it, she shows how anyone can be susceptible to narcissistic leaders and groups that claim to know the truth. They use natural human vulnerabilities and group dynamics to slowly take over a person’s critical thinking skills.

“The level of shame is very high for people coming out of cultic organizations,” she said. She was plagued with questions about how she, an educated person, could have let it get so bad and stayed for so long.

In recent years, many survivors have found connection through social media. Those connections, plus the pandemic lockdown and a boom in media programs about cults, have prompted many to reexamine their relationships with their tight-knit groups and leaders.

Pordea recalls watching Leah Remini’s documentary, “Scientology and the Aftermath,” with her husband, who hadn't fully accepted the truth about his and Pordea's upbringing.

Watching Remini's story, the parallels to his own life finally hit him.

He looked at Pordea, stunned.

“Oh my God, it was a cult,” he said.